Read Online But What If We're Wrong? by Chuck Klosterman - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Chuck Klosterman
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artists who invented it. 19 Almost anything can be labeled ârockââMetallica, ABBA, Mannheim Steamroller, a haircut, a muffler. If youâre a successful tax attorney who owns a hot tub, clients will refer to you as a ârock star CPAâ when describing your business to their less hip neighbors. The metaphysical conception of ârockâ cuts such a wide swath that it even includes subgenres that can be applied with equal ubiquity, like
punk
and
metal
and (until the mid-nineties)
hip-hop
. The definingmusic of the first half of the twentieth century was jazz; the defining music of the second half of the twentieth century was rock, but with an ideology and saturation far more pervasive. Only television supersedes its influence. And pretty much from the moment it came into being, people who liked ârockâ insisted it was dead. The critic Richard Meltzer allegedly claimed that rock was already dead
in 1968
. And he was wrong to the same degree that he was right.
Meltzerâs wrongness on this point is obvious and does not require explanation, unless you honestly think
Purple Rain
blows. But his rightness is more complicated: Rock
is
dead, in the sense that its âalivenessâ is a subjective assertion based on whatever criteria the listener happens to care about. When someone argued rock was âdeadâ in 1968 or 1977 or 1994 or 2005, that individual was making an aesthetic argument, grounded in whatever that person assumed to be the compromised motives of the artists of the time (customarily built on the conviction that the current generation of musicians were more careerist in nature, thus detracting from the amount of raw emotion they were allegedly injecting into the music). The popularity of the rock genre is irrelevant to this accusation. People insisted rock was dead in the mid-1980s, the absolute commercial peak for guitar-driven music. Normal consumers declare rock to be dead whenever they personally stop listening to it (or at least to new iterations of it), which typically happens about two years after they graduate from college. This has almost nothing to do with whatâs actually happening with the artists who make it. There will always be a handful of musicians making new rock music, just as there will always be a handful of musicians making new mariachi music. The entire debate issemantic: Something thatâs only metaphorically alive can never be literally dead.
But rock can (and will) recede, almost to the level of nihility. And for the purposes of this book, thatâs the same as dying.
Now, here is the paradox (and you knew a paradox was coming, because thatâs how this works): The cultural recession of rock is intertwined with its increased cultural absorption, which seems backward. But this is a product of its design. The symbolic value of rock is conflict-based. It emerged as a by-product of the postâWorld War II invention of the teenager. 20 This was a twenty-five-year period when the gap between generations was utterly real and uncommonly vast. There was virtually no way a man born in 1920 would (or could) share the same musical taste as his son born in 1955, even if they had identical personalities. That inherent dissonance gave rock music a distinctive, non-musical importance for a very long time. But that period is over. Ozzy Osbourneâs âCrazy Trainâ is used in a commercial for a Honda minivan. The Whoâs âWonât Get Fooled Againâ was the opening theme for one of the most popular series in the history of CBS, the network with the oldest average viewership. The music of the Ramones has been converted into lullabies. There are string renditions of Joy Divisionâs âLove Will Tear Us Apartâ for lush, sardonic wedding processions. NBC used the Nine Inch Nails track âSomething I CanNever Haveâ as bumper music for the Wimbledon tennis tournament. âRockâ can now signify
punk
and
metal
and (until the mid-nineties)
hip-hop
. The definingmusic of the first half of the twentieth century was jazz; the defining music of the second half of the twentieth century was rock, but with an ideology and saturation far more pervasive. Only television supersedes its influence. And pretty much from the moment it came into being, people who liked ârockâ insisted it was dead. The critic Richard Meltzer allegedly claimed that rock was already dead
in 1968
. And he was wrong to the same degree that he was right.
Meltzerâs wrongness on this point is obvious and does not require explanation, unless you honestly think
Purple Rain
blows. But his rightness is more complicated: Rock
is
dead, in the sense that its âalivenessâ is a subjective assertion based on whatever criteria the listener happens to care about. When someone argued rock was âdeadâ in 1968 or 1977 or 1994 or 2005, that individual was making an aesthetic argument, grounded in whatever that person assumed to be the compromised motives of the artists of the time (customarily built on the conviction that the current generation of musicians were more careerist in nature, thus detracting from the amount of raw emotion they were allegedly injecting into the music). The popularity of the rock genre is irrelevant to this accusation. People insisted rock was dead in the mid-1980s, the absolute commercial peak for guitar-driven music. Normal consumers declare rock to be dead whenever they personally stop listening to it (or at least to new iterations of it), which typically happens about two years after they graduate from college. This has almost nothing to do with whatâs actually happening with the artists who make it. There will always be a handful of musicians making new rock music, just as there will always be a handful of musicians making new mariachi music. The entire debate issemantic: Something thatâs only metaphorically alive can never be literally dead.
But rock can (and will) recede, almost to the level of nihility. And for the purposes of this book, thatâs the same as dying.
Now, here is the paradox (and you knew a paradox was coming, because thatâs how this works): The cultural recession of rock is intertwined with its increased cultural absorption, which seems backward. But this is a product of its design. The symbolic value of rock is conflict-based. It emerged as a by-product of the postâWorld War II invention of the teenager. 20 This was a twenty-five-year period when the gap between generations was utterly real and uncommonly vast. There was virtually no way a man born in 1920 would (or could) share the same musical taste as his son born in 1955, even if they had identical personalities. That inherent dissonance gave rock music a distinctive, non-musical importance for a very long time. But that period is over. Ozzy Osbourneâs âCrazy Trainâ is used in a commercial for a Honda minivan. The Whoâs âWonât Get Fooled Againâ was the opening theme for one of the most popular series in the history of CBS, the network with the oldest average viewership. The music of the Ramones has been converted into lullabies. There are string renditions of Joy Divisionâs âLove Will Tear Us Apartâ for lush, sardonic wedding processions. NBC used the Nine Inch Nails track âSomething I CanNever Haveâ as bumper music for the Wimbledon tennis tournament. âRockâ can now signify
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